Professional Conduct Guaranteed

Professional associations adhere to the strictest standards of ethics. I know because I belong to a few of them. They all have rigorous codes of ethics that professionals must abide by. I also know that bankers, lawyers, teachers, accountants, Edward Snowden and Lance Armstrong have codes of ethics. Even the Miami-Dade City Commission has a code of ethics, but unfortunately nobody can find it since the FBI left a mess in their last raid. They do have it though, and it is in three languages: Tonkawa, Etchemin, and Hialehan. This is how old it is, which explains why nobody used it.

This ethics business can be very trying, especially when you work in stressful jobs like accounting, law, medicine, and teaching. Codes of ethics demand respectful treatment of your clients at all times, and under all circumstances. Accountants, for example, would never tell a client “you are running the biggest scheme in the history of forensic accounting.” Instead, they are going to write a report to the Board stating that “a fiduciary audit revealed a larger than expected shrinkage in the accrued income collateralized with tangible assets which has resulted in a smaller than expected WACC (weighted average costs of capital), leading to large sums of money deposited in suspense accounts which were securitized against promissory notes and future taxation used to defray costs of doing business in certain parts of South Florida. Computer models based on SWOT analyses predict that outside agencies will show interest in your business.”

TRANSLATION: You should stop bribing city commissioners and start paying taxes or you will be in jail in 3 to 5 months.

Teachers are also very respectful professionals. They prepare for months for parent-teacher interview. Some excerpts:

GRADE 11 TEACHER: Jordan’s performance in the SMRT-VII has remained stable since the last time he was evaluated.

TRANSLATION: He is still as dumb as he was in grade 2.

GRADE 3 TEACHER: Suzie is extremely peripatetic and shows great curiosity towards people and events unrelated to the subject matter at hand.

TRANSLATION: If you don’t put her on Ritalin I will.

Predictably, lawyers have the strictest code of ethics. This is why they reassure you that if they sue 734 innocent people on your behalf and by random chance the judge falls asleep during the proceedings and they win 3 cases, they will share with you 0.0000001% of the money. After taxes, photocopying, paper clips, faxes, office parties, late night pizza parties, and courier expenses, they guarantee to pay you 0.00000000000001% of the net profits. This is the only profession that guarantees 0.000000000001% of anything. No questions or medical exams required. In contrast, most other professions require you to pay them.

Take doctors for example. Before you even said what was wrong with you, a smiling assistant will invite you to a little booth, take an X ray of all your bank accounts, conduct a physical examination of all your credit cards, insert a finger in your wallet to extract your driver’s license and your health insurance card, and review the chart of payments on your mortgage. She will also perform a stress test on your 401 K account, and check the pressure in the tires of your car, just to be sure there is something of worth in case the insurance company denies your claim, which happens 99% of the time. By the time you see the doctor your blood pressure is so high that the insurance company is bound to reject your claim, leaving the smiling clerk with no choice but to impound your car and clean up your 401 K.

Health Insurance Companies are very explicit in their insistence on equality: All patients will be treated the same. No matter what the ailment is, your ability to pay, or the policy you have. Before the doctor sees you, everyone must sign 29 forms with very small font. They don’t pressure you to sign the form however. You can take your time. At an average speed of 3 minutes per page, it will take you 5 hours to read the forms they give you. Allowing for lunch and bathroom breaks, you are lucky if you see the doctor at 5 pm, provided you got there at 6 am. Doctors, however, will never pressure anybody to sign anything they don’t understand. The American Medical Association is very explicit about that. You don’t have to sign anything you don’t feel comfortable with. You will never see a doctor in your life if you choose to read all the forms, but patient autonomy must be respected at all times.

Doctors do all that to prevent any harm, and more. They will do whatever it takes to prevent you from buying prescription drugs from unknown countries like Canada, or going to India to receive medical treatment. The AMA is against medical tourism. I do have to agree with them on the India thing. A friend of mine went to India to have a heart operation and returned with a sex transplant instead. Doctors are obliged to warn you against things like that.